Monday, August 1, 2011

The Beast Approaches

We Are Wisconsin's La Crosse headquarters a 'total loss' after Saturday morning blaze.

Fire officials in La Crosse are continuing to investigate a Saturday blaze that destroyed the regional offices of We Are Wisconsin, a union political action committee (PAC) that has pumped millions of dollars into supporting Democratic candidates in the upcoming recall elections.

The La Crosse Tribune reports that the cause of the fire, which started at about 9:30 a.m., remains unknown."

The last few years I've spent a lot of time reading about Germany in the 1920's. I know a lot of people must have thought I was as crazy as the teabaggers when I saw reflections of that period of intimidation and political violence in what is gong on with the American right.

Sure, Republicans haven't gone as far as the right wing parties in 1920's Germany- yet. But, in the face of eternal Democratic fecklessness, in the face of Democratic failure to hold anyone responsible in any way for the damage their right wing ideology has caused, and in the face of Republicans' increasing demographic weakness, how long can it be before they go the distance? With incidents like this, we are only a step away from the open political thuggery that accompanied the Nazi's rise to power.

I am not calling people Nazis here. I am recognizing the development of a clear analog to what happened in Germany. Virtually no one wants to face this hateful fact, but mark my words, fact it is.

And don't forget that when the world stopped Hitler, at the cost of 50.000.000 dead, he didn't have several thousand nuclear weapons. I fear that if the American monster arises, nothing in the world will stop it. Do you think the likes of Dick Cheney would hesitate to use nuclear weapons for one second if it got them what they want?

9 comments:

JohninOregon
said...

As I mentioned previously, I worked for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for eight years. Naturally, I was exposed to the history you mentioned, as well as a whole lot of what followed. That experience has a lot to do with my fascination -- and horror -- over what the GOP has become. One factor still missing in the American equation (but who knows for how much longer) is a charismatic leader who can unite the knuckle-draggers. Yes, there are factions that admire Palin, Bachmann, Cain, etc., but so far no one person fills the void left by the sainted dead guy -- Reagan -- who seems more sane than I ever thought possible when compared to the idiots on display today.

I have to admit that in reading this blog for the past year you did at times seem a bit off the wall in your assertion that something like a Nazi party was building on the right in America. But I am starting to see things dovetail. It's all making sense. Thank you Green Eagle for your ongoing lessons here.

Ten years ago today, Americans went about their business with a reasonably healthy economy, their Bill of Rights intact, manageable debt levels, free of existential threats, no wars lost or fought across spans of a decade or more since Vietnam, confident that their kids had a prosperous future, and generally facing the new century like a sleepy riser enjoying the first rays of the morning sun over a nice cup of coffee.

Now look where the fuck you are. There is no questioning the fact that a radical and profoundly malign right wing coalition of interests is seething up from the bowels of America.

I would have believed that even if I didn’t have the good fortune to have Green Eagle find me out here in internet land. I already knew it. Most people around me who have any interest in the wider world are aware of it to some degree. I believe it because it’s true, not because I want to. I would like nothing better than to put my head back down and go about my life secure in the knowledge that the most influential ‘free’ country in the world is in safe hands, that my American friends have nothing to worry about, and that the world is becoming a better place.

But that’s not the case.

Whether or not one aligns oneself with this political party or that, as citizens of an enlightened and just country you have a right to expect a major party with over a hundred years of continuous history to police itself. To recognize that extremism has no place in its agenda, that holding the country to economic ransom is not a conscionable way of making a political score, that caving into a cabal like the Tea Party is an act of unprincipled cowardice.

One of the questions I get asked the most by my American friends is “do you have something like the Tea Party?” and I say we did for a short time. One Nation, they were called. Very similar.

They ask what happened to it and I tell them our conservatives destroyed it. Our conservatives. The people I don’t even vote for.They could have rolled over and let that bunch of ignorant, racist, xenophobic, financially dishonest, economically-illiterate halfwits and stooges of the rich influence policy. But the conservative leader – who I don’t even like – said no, there is a transcendent interest to the nation that must always be protected.

A god-fearing tax-hating conservative politician, his actual words were “You have to ask yourself what kind of paranoid, halfway to Waco, Texas, world--what kind of weird existence--do the leadership of One Nation actually have.”

It has the been the sacred duty of the Republican party to similarly protect the American people, to uphold some sort of non-partisan principle, and they’ve betrayed it. They’ve letter absolute lunatics and incompetents into their ideological house for a total ransacking. And for all this I’m still actually being nice about the Republicans. I’m still saying they’re a political party at all - and not just a weapon of the criminal and greedy. Maybe it’s worse than even I think, and that Green Eagle is right about that.

Since Obama won the election I have waited, waited, waited for someone, ANYONE, in the GOP say “we have deal with destructive elements in our party, and stare down the fringe elements who do not represent our best values, and offer the American people a genuine and principled alternative that shows we care about all Americans”.

Still waiting. In the meantime the beast is getting bolder, and more vicious.

The world still needs America, I think. But already the world is moving to a post-America mindset. There’s trouble ahead that could be thwarted bloodlessly, opportunity that could be seized bloodlessly, if only America was still around.People will ask… “where did you go?”

at least we want the guy with experience as the President then Rubio will be ready to beat anyone contender in 2020.Actually he probably could beat Obama now but we prefer not to have another on the job trainee.

Magpie: Beautiful comment. I wish there were more people in this country that could see what you see, from so far away.

And I cannot forget those 5,000 nuclear weapons. If the mad right wingers in this country really do take control, I don't know how the rest of the world could stop them.

Now, Anonymous, you know damned well that the answer to this country's problems is not to turn our government over to people whose thinking got us here in the first place. Come on- the country needs politically aware people like you to face the truth and stop what is happening, not further it.